


illusions of immortality

by liminal



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst, Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 22:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?" - Louis XIV</p><p>Isobel, Mary and George reflect on death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	illusions of immortality

_"If you live in a graveyard, you can’t weep for everyone." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn_

For Isobel, the village is a refuge and a sanctuary, a shrine and a place of pilgrimage. In the winter she hears snow crunch underfoot as she walks to the chemist, in the warmer months she sees imprints in the sprouting grass, and in the autumn there are leaves blowing around a second invisible body. One that walks besides her, comforts her, gently straightens her back and offers her the crook of an arm to lean on. 

The village is where she sees him nip to the pub for an evening out or go for a stroll with a newspaper tucked under one arm. It’s where the teashop that sold his favourite cake opens for business at eight in the morning and closes at five each afternoon. It’s where she sees the church that married and buried him. 

Every car that passes through the village is a green AC and every screech of the brakes leaves her feeling grateful and distraught. There is one more mother who will never endure what she has endured, there is one more son who will kiss his mama on the cheek and promise to be more careful next time. 

The village is small and everlasting because, in these parts, communities exist to keep memories alive. So when she leaves the birthday celebrations early and rejects the offer of a lift home, it is because Murray and the Websters and Mrs Atkins and the butcher’s youngest son will smile and wave at her as she passes through. Because Jack Chester will offer the crook of his arm and answer her questions about legal training, or because Davey Keough will make her laugh with his Irish lilt, and because sometimes the footprints next to hers are solid and real, even if they walk in the imprint of a shadow.

*

For Mary, the Abbey is both home and a prison, where ghosts walk the corridors alongside her. James Crawley, Patrick Crawley, Richard Carlisle, Sybil, Matthew. Dead men, dead sisters, dead relationships, each one killing her softly, piece by piece. Edith, inappropriately drunk, once suggested she take up Buddhism: “It's reincarnation, you’ve got more lives than a cat.”

Here, the living and the dead live side by side, and the boundaries between solid and transparent are unfixed. In the dining room she hears fragments of long finished conversations; and in the drawing room, convalescing soldiers grimace and grin and regale them all with tales of the Front. In the library, that awful vase is smashed over and over again, and it’s not always Henry that she lies next to in bed. 

In the summer she sits on the bench and remembers an argument, such a trivial affair, about love and inheritance and she remembers the blind passions of youth. When she smells his cologne in the light breeze, it’s because Tom’s tucked an old handkerchief into her coat pocket or because George was there not five minutes before her. In the snowy nights of winter she remembers a twirl and an embrace that promised a lifetime, not two years of joy and decades of sadness.   


For her, the Abbey is where the dead rest and the living struggle on.

*

For George, the village graveyard changes over time. At the start, it’s a place where he performs a duty in silent deference, because he has to and he ought to. He trudges slowly towards it, holding Mama’s hand if she’s feeling well, or else Uncle Tom’s. He stops besides the headstone, takes his cap off and says a few words in his head- something vague and polite to a slab of rock with some scratches in that’s supposed to represent a man that he is told to refer to as “Papa”. He does the same for Aunt Sybil, only Uncle Tom’s there to tell a funny story about her or smile at him. For the longest time, George thinks that his “Papa” must have been a very serious man because Mama has no funny stories to tell about him. None she’ll share with him, anyway.

In time, he walks down by himself, going when the urge strikes him. Sometimes it’s beautifully sunny and the air is crisp, and he thinks they all deserve to hear about it. He cracks a joke with Granny Isobel, tells Granny Violet about Granny Cora’s latest plan, tells Aunt Sybil how beautiful Sybbie looked yesterday and passes on Mama’s regards to his “Papa”.

He doesn’t cry for a long time. Crawleys are not brought up to cry and so he bears Carson’s funeral and Grandpa Robert’s with fortitude, and everyone remarks on how he has become the picture of stoicism. Sybbie grips his hand tightly and they enter into a silent battle of strength, and afterwards he makes polite conversation while nibbling on a sandwich back at the Abbey. His Abbey.

His greatest tragedy, he decides on one of his walks to the graveyard, was being born when he was. When half a generation was obliterated some five years before and those that survived nurse their wounds rather than their children.

The tears come in 1939, when he joins the Royal Air Force. “Papa” becomes Dad when Death flies Messerschmitts and fires on him with all abandon, and men are gunned down while they grasp their lucky charms and think about their fiancées back home. Tears stream when Mama tells him about leave visits back to the Abbey and bedside prayers and a worn-out toy rabbit she wishes she could part with for a second time. 

When he visits the graveyard again in 1945, the sunlight glinting off the medals on his chest, he smiles at Aunt Sybil and Grandpa Robert and all of his Grandmothers as he passes by. He lays flowers for Matthew Reginald Crawley, tells him what a beautiful day it is and about his plans with Julia Davenport at the Four Hundred Club. And because there is no one to cry for, because he is so intimately familiar with Death and fears it no longer, he does not cry.

And the day is more beautiful for it.


End file.
